- San Francisco was the port where many
young men and women were discharged after World War 2.
Those that didn't feel that they fit in back
on the farm or the small town, stayed.
The beat movement grew in the 1950s
and the city became a haven for artists and writers.
By 1966, San Franciso was the epicenter
of the counter-culture revolution.
A small group of designers began making posters to promote
events at the Fillmore auditorium in 1966.
The posters followed a style that was fluid and complex.
Any poster from this time period and style
is grouped together as a Fillmore poster.
It's important to realize that this was
the height of the American corporate identity,
Swiss typography and international style but the Fillmore
posters are 180 degrees from these.
We look at these today and think,
"How can anyone read that?"
The point at the time was to reject legible Swiss modernism
in favor for a more organic and a less rigid experience.
This was also amplified by the use
of hallucinogenic drugs and other substances.
The idea was, frankly, to take these drugs
and stare at a poster for hours.
There was a strong connection to the ideas of Art Nouveau.
In the same way that Art Nouveau designers
rejected the cold idea of the industrial age,
the Fillmore poster designers rejected hard edged
modernism and consumer driven culture.
There are stylistic connections to Art Nouveau
and conceptual connections to 19th
Century writers like Lewis Carroll.
Books like Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
are filled with mind altering drugs.
Placards with Jefferson Airplane's lyrics
based on Alice's story promoted drug usage.
The Liedenthal poster for
Big Brother and the Holding Company takes the
Cheshire Cat from Alice as a nod to drugs.
Much of the work was silk screened
or printed on small presses.
It was often turned around quickly.
The demands created a unique set of circumstances
that allowed for explanation and experimentation.
Typography was typically hand drawn.
This solved two problems.
The first being the difficulty
to obtain type setting which was expensive.
The second being a personal and organic approach.
The color palattes are rarely polite.
The colors vibrate and clash
often creating optical illusions.
Again, this was a response to the viewer who was taking LSD
and the designer who was typically designing while on LSD.
The Fillmore poster movement became
the look of a new generation.
The style implied a new consciousness
and a rejection of the old and traditional ways.
Young people began putting these posters
on their walls as a symbol of unity.
For the first time, posters were designed
to be viewed in a personal rather than public setting.
Like all movements, the counter-culture
evolved and eventually disappeared.
Once advertisers noticed the youth market's
connection to this, they began using it to sell products.
The idea of dropping out which was a way of suggesting
that one would leave school or a job and live off the land
was modified to be a selling point for soda drinks
and washing detergent by the early 1970s.
The value of this work for me is the exuberant
approach to typography and color.
No two colors are ever wrong and
type can and cannot be legible.
These radical ideas opened the door
for all alternative graphic design today.